After the end of World War I, the 1919 Egyptian Revolution broke out calling for liberty, independence and democracy. This revolution resulted in 28 February 1922 declaration which recognized Egypt as an independent state (with some reservations) and terminated Egypt as a British protectorate.

Based on this new status, a new Egyptian Constitution was promulgated in April 1923 by a 30-member legislative committee that included representatives of political parties, as well as national movement leaders.

The 1923 Constitution of Egypt was a previous working constitution of Egypt during the period 1923-1952. It was replaced by the 1930 Constitution for a 5-year period (19301935) before being restored in 1935. It adopted the parliamentary representative system based on separation of and cooperation among authorities. The Parliament was bicameral system made up of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

During 1923 - 1952 Egypt witnessed a remarkable experience rich in political and democratic practices, however, such an experience was marked with many defects such as the British occupation, foreign intervention in Egypt's affairs and the royal palace's interference in political life.

Wahbah explained to Ben-Gurion why it was impossible to negotiate a lasting peace. A few years before, Wahbah recounted, when he had called for peace in Jerusalem, Wahbah had mentioned that Jerusalem was a holy city for Jews and Christians as well as for Muslims.

In response, he continued, he received a stack of cables and insults asking how much the Jews had paid him to say that.

Compromise could not take place, Wahbah concluded, in an atmosphere where everyone was afraid he might be accused of treason.

Recently, in the "Palestine Papers" controversy, the idea that Palestinian Authority negotiators might have made in passing on one occasion--though they then abandoned the idea--a couple of real proposed concessions--led to the officials involved going into hiding, denying, and resigning.

Now with political upheavals and even revolutions in the Arab world--which many Arabs attribute to the rejection of governments too friendly with the West and too willing to make peace with Israel--the idea that compromise would be equated with treason is as likely today as it was in 1938.

Oh, and by the way, in 1938, Egypt had a parliamentary system with free elections. Four years later, though, the British surrounded the king's palace with tanks and forced him to appoint another government. The existing one, you see, favored a Nazi victory and with General Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Corps crossing into Egypt the British could no longer afford that luxury.

Of course, in principle the Middle East can change for the better. It just doesn't seem to do so too much in practice. And that's a problem for people who live in Western societies where change for the better is assumed as universal and inevitable.

=========Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The GLORIA Center's site is http://www.gloria-center.org/ and of his blog, Rubin Reports, http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com/.

Mideast turmoil and Western media hypocrisy

It's easy to be misled into thinking that news organizations have always cared about repressive governance; let's see whether this newly discovered passion for the events in the Arab world will translate into reprioritization of resources.

Western news organisations have been keen to point out the "lessons to be learned" by their governments in light of the tumultuous events in the Middle East over the last six weeks. The popular admonition doing the rounds relates to U.S., British and EU military and political support for "dictators" and "repressive regimes" in the Arab world, deemed immoral (left-wing publications) and ill-advised (right-wing publications).

All of which is true to an extent. But journalists might want to look closer to home on the issue of hypocritical conduct regarding the Arab world.

With the explosion of media coverage of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and now Libya, it would be easy to be misled into thinking that news organizations have always given the time of day to the topics of repressive governance and human rights violations in the region.

This is simply not the case. Whilst sporadic references to autocratic rule across the Middle East can certainly be found over the years, it cannot be denied that there has been precious little focused and ongoing reportage on the sorry state of affairs to be found there.

Western consumers of print, online and broadcast media were more likely to come across the Arab world in the context of its collective outrage over alleged human rights violations perpetrated against civilians not on their own home turf but, conveniently, over the road in Palestine at the hands of the vicious Israelis.

Before these seismic events, no correspondents were documenting, week on week, the injustices faced by millions living in these closed societies, where basic freedoms are the exception rather than the rule, dissenters are jailed or murdered and leaders are simply not accountable to their people.

The Guardian's response to the revolution in Tunisia in January is a classic case in point. Its editorial following the fleeing of President Ben Ali in January cited "a brutal dictator and his venal family," a "police state" and "torture and human rights violations." It also awarded "the prize for brazen hypocrisy" to France for its role in propping up the regime, with the U.S. and EU following "close behind."

All quite accurate, but since when did The Guardian care about this brutal dictator and the poor people living in the grip of his police state? By the publication's own calculations, in 2010, Tunisia was one of their least reported countries  114th out of a possible 194  with only 18 "content items" in 2010. To put this in context, there were 1008 pieces on Israel.

The hitherto lack of journalistic interest in what goes on in the 21 Arab countries is illustrated starkly by how few foreign correspondents are based there. Take the five British broadsheets: The Times, Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and The Independent. Each has two or three correspondents permanently based in the Middle East. In all five cases, at least one of those correspondents is in Jerusalem. The Independent and The Times devote two of their three people to Israel.

Those not in Israel live in and report from Lebanon and Dubai; in one case, Iraq. Hence, the lack of reportage (before now) about the terrible police states and autocracies that are (or were) Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Bahrain, Yemen etc: the British broadsheets had all their resources in the West Bank reporting on Israeli settlements, which, as a result, everybody knows a great deal about.

The New York Times, too, might want to reconsider the wisdom of granting op-eds to dictators like Muammar Gadhafi to pontificate about how to bring justice to Israel-Palestine, when they preside over one of the most repressive and unjust regimes in the world; not least because they end up looking silly when two years later, that same leader is holed up in Tripoli vowing to kill all his citizens for having the audacity to voice their disapproval of his rule.

Nevertheless, media focus on the real Middle East is welcome. But it will be interesting to see whether this newly discovered passion for the events and realities in the region will translate into a reprioritisation of resources.

Hopefully, for example, The Times and The Independent will sacrifice one of their two Jerusalem reporters in the name of a more diverse and realistic portrayal of a region which, it now seems has more going on than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Carmel Gould is the Editorial Manager of Just Journalism, a non-profit think tank focusing on British media coverage of Israel, the Palestinians and the Middle East.

Last week, a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman tried to allay fears that the group would rip up the Camp David agreement:

"The decision on the treaty does not belong to the Brotherhood, it belongs to the entire Egyptian people," said Essam al-Erian, a spokesman for the Islamist group, in an interview with Al Arabiya.

"The important thing is the position of the Egyptian people and not the Brotherhood," Erian said. "The Brotherhood will not impose their vision on the Egyptian people. The Brotherhood are part of society that accepts what the Egyptians accept and nobody can wipe out a treaty with a pen," he added.

A senior member of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood said there is virtually no peace agreement with the Zionist regime following the recent developments in the country, adding that any treaty not approved by the Egyptian nation must be abrogated.

The Egyptian nation considers as null and void any agreement between the toppled regime and the Zionist regime which has no respect for justice and rights of the Egyptian people.

He said the world was witnessing massive changes. "People worldwide want to see unjust laws scraped. It is no surprise for the Egyptians to want the same," he said.

Halbavi then touched on the dismantling of Berlin wall, adding that following the dismantling, many previously signed treaties were abrogated.He said the time was over for surrender to treaties which have brought humiliation to the Egyptian nation.

Halbavi also called for permanent opening of Gaza crossing and said the closing of the crossing has been a joint conspiracy by the US, Zionist regime and Mubarak's regime.

But of course the hard-line statements are simply posturing and the more moderate-sounding statements are the correct ones. Because it has to be that way in order for the media to continue with their memes of a progressive, socially-active, uninfluential, non-political Muslim Brotherhood.

A Hamas news source in Damascus is claiming that Moammar Gaddafi threatened to kill tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs in Libya because of his anger at the perceived support that Hamas and Islamic Jihad were giving the uprising.

According to the story, Gaddafi also threatened to cut off funds for Gaza development projects that Libya is underwriting.

The story goes on the claim that the PA instructed its people to not speak publicly about the Libyan revolution, saying it is an internal Libyan matter.

Perhaps if more pressure had been brought to bear against Gaddafi, Libya's citizens would not now be getting shot down in the streets.

It was an old and festering wound in Libyans' collective memory that was the immediate cause of the bloody clashes that broke out in the streets of Benghazi last Tuesday evening.

A group of families whose sons were brutally massacred by the Libyan authorities would not abandon their quest for justice. They refused to be rebuffed yet again by state officials.

In 1996, an estimated 1,200 prisoners, mostly opponents of Muammar Gaddafi's dictatorial regime, were rounded up and gunned down in the space of a few hours in Tripoli's infamous Abu Salim prison. The victims' bodies were reportedly removed from the prison in wheelbarrows and refrigerated trucks and buried in mass graves. To this day, the Libyan authorities refuse to disclose the whereabouts of these graves. It wasn't until 2004 that Gaddafi admitted that the massacre had taken place.

The families of the victims, represented by human rights activist Fathi Terbil, wanted more than an admission.

When Terbil was arrested early last Tuesday, Libyans took to the streets in protest, two days before a previously planned "Day of Rage" was slated for cities across the country. Human Rights Watch estimated on Sunday that 233 people had been killed in the ongoing protests, many the victims of indiscriminate machine-gun fire directed at peaceful protesters by a coalition of commandos and foreign mercenaries loyal to Gaddafi. The NGO is warning of a new human rights crisis in Libya.

NEITHER THE Abu Salim prison massacre nor the many other human rights abuses perpetrated by Gaddafi's regime over the past four decades have been singled out for censure by the world's purported protector of human rights  the UN's Human Rights Council.

Established in 2006 with a mandate to reform its predecessor, the UN Commission on Human Rights, the HRC has in the past five years issued some 50 resolutions that condemn countries; of those, 35 have been focused on Israel, and not one has been issued against Libya. Even as of Monday evening, as protesters were being shot down in the streets of Libya, no emergency session of the HRC had been called by its members, which include the US and the EU, as Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, noted in a soon-to-appear interview with The Jerusalem Post's Ilan Evyatar. Neuer called this omission by the HRC and its members "not only a let-down to the many Libyans risking their lives for freedom, but a shirking of [the HRC's] obligations."

Indeed, instead of being condemned, Libya has been lionized. In May 2010, Libya was, absurdly, elected as a member of the HRC, a move that was not blocked by the Obama administration (as Iran's bid for membership was). This was the culmination of a steady ascendancy to every important diplomatic body at the UN  including the African Union chairmanship, the UN Security Council and the presidency of the UN General Assembly. In a 100-minute rant given before the assembly in September 2009, his first since he took control of Libya in a military coup in 1969, Gaddafi exploited the opportunity to liken the UN Security Council to a "terror council" because of the veto rights enjoyed by the US and the other four UNSC permanent members.

A month earlier, the man US president Richard Nixon had referred to as the "mad dog of the Middle East" met with former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain.

"Late evening with Col. Kaddafi at his 'ranch' in Libya  interesting meeting with an interesting man," McCain tweeted the next day. Several weeks later, this "interesting man" ignored McCain's request not to give a "hero's welcome" to freed Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Ali al- Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent.

WHILE 'ENGAGEMENT' has proved a dismal failure, other methods have been more effective. It should be recalled that it was in the wake of the US's invasion of Iraq that Gaddafi, anxious not to become America's next target, magnanimously offered to scrap his nascent nuclear program.

Although the US no longer enjoys the kind of influence it had in the region after the Iraq invasion, the Obama administration can move from a defensive strategy in the UN of vetoing the many anti-Israel resolutions, to an offensive approach  along with other democracies  singling out countries like Libya in a concerted shame campaign.

Perhaps if more pressure had been brought to bear against Gaddafi when he just might have been ready to listen, Libya's citizens would not now be getting shot down in the streets by a "mad dog" regime. At the very least, the UN would have retained a modicum of moral legitimacy.

Militiamen loyal to Moammar Gaddafi clamped down in Tripoli, with the sound of gunfire ringing in the air, while protesters who control much of the eastern half of Libya claimed new gains in cities and towns closer to the heart of Gaddafi's regime in the capital.

Protesters said they had taken over Misrata, which would be the largest city in the western half in the country to fall into their hands. Clashes broke out over the past two days in the town of Sabratha, west of the capital, where the army and militiamen were trying to put down protesters who overwhelmed security headquarters and government buildings, a news website close to the government reported.

A French doctor working in Libya's eastern city of Benghazi told Le Point Magazine that over 2,000 people were killed in that city alone in the past days of fighting, AFP reported.

"From Tobruk to Darna, they carried out a real massacre... In total, I think there are more than 2,000 deaths," he said.

The 60-year-old anesthetist who has been living in the Libyan city for over a year, said that one the first day of fighting in Benghazi, "out ambulances counted 75 bodies...200 on the second [day], then more than 500." On the third day, he added, "I ran out of morphine and medications," according to the report.

Two air force pilots jumped from parachutes from their Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jet and let it crash, rather than carry out orders to bomb Libya's second largest city, Benghazi, which is now in opposition hands, the website Quryna reported, citing an unidentified officer in the air force control room.

One of the pilots was from Gaddafi's tribe, the Gadhadhfa, said Farag al-Maghrabi, a local resident who saw the pilots and the wreckage of the jet, which crashed in a deserted area outside the key oil port of Breqa.

International outrage mounted after Gaddafi on Tuesday went on state TV and in a fist-pounding speech called on his supporters to take to the streets to fight protesters. Gaddafi's retaliation has already been the harshest in the Arab world to the wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East.

Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said estimates of some 1,000 people killed in the violence in Libya were "credible," although he stressed information about casualties was incomplete. The New York-based Human Rights Watch has put the death toll at nearly 300, according to a partial count.

Gaddafi's speech appeared to have brought out a heavy force of supporters and militiamen that largely prevented major protests in the capital Tuesday night or Wednesday. Through the night, gunfire was heard, said one woman who lives near downtown.

"Mercenaries are everywhere with weapons. You can't open a window or door. Snipers hunt people," she said. "We are under siege, at the mercy of a man who is not a Muslim."

During the day Wednesday, more gunfire was heard near Gaddafi's residence, but in many parts of the city of 2 million residents were venturing out to stores, some residents said. The government sent out text messages urging people to go back to their jobs, aiming to show that life was returning to normal. The residents spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

But Libya's upheaval, just over a week old, has shattered the hold of Gaddafi's regime across much of the country. Protesters claim to hold towns and cities along nearly the entire eastern half of the 1,000-mile Mediterranean coastline, from the Egyptian border. In parts, they have set up their own jury-rigged self-administrations.

At the Egyptian border, guards had fled, and local tribal elders have formed local committees to take their place. "Welcome to the new Libya," a graffiti spray-painted at the crossing proclaimed. Fawzy Ignashy, a former soldier, now in civilian clothes at the border, said that early in the protests, some commanders ordered troops to fire on protesters, but then tribal leaders stepped in and ordered them to stop.

"They did because they were from here. So the officers fled," he said.

Protesters have claimed control all the way to the city of Ajdabiya, about 480 miles (800 kilometers) east of Tripoli, encroaching on the key oil fields around the Gulf of Sidra.

That has left Gaddafi's power centered around Tripoli, in the far west and parts of the country's center. But that appeared to be weakening in parts.

Protesters in Misrata were claiming victory after several days of fighting with Gaddafi loyalists in the city, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) east of Tripoli.

Residents were honking horns in celebration and raising the pre-Gaddafi flags of the Libyan monarchy, said Faraj al-Misrati, a local doctor. He said six people had been killed and 200 wounded in clashes that began Feb. 18 and eventually drove out pro-Gaddafi militiamen.

An audio statement posted on the Internet was reportedly from armed forces officers in Misrata proclaiming "our total support" for the protesters.

New videos posted by Libya's opposition on Facebook also showed scores of anti-government protesters raising the flag from the pre-Gaddafi monarchy on a building in Zawiya, 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Tripoli. Another showed protesters lining up cement blocks and setting tires ablaze to fortify positions on a square inside the capital.

The footage couldn't be independently confirmed.

Further west, armed forces deployed in Sabratha, a town famed for nearby ancient Roman ruins, in a bid to regain control after protesters burned government buildings and police stations, the Quryna news website reported. It said clashes had erupted between soldiers and residents in the past nights and that residents were also reporting an influx of pro-Gaddafi militias that have led heaviest crackdown on protesters.

The opposition also claimed control in Zwara, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from the Tunisian border in the west, after local army units sided with the protesters and police fled.

"The situation here is very secure, the people here have organized security committees, and there are people who have joined us from the army," said a 25-year-old unemployed university graduate in Zwara. "This man (Gaddafi) has reached the point that he's saying he will bring armies from African (to fight protesters). That means he is isolated," he said.

The division of the country — and defection of some army units to the protesters — raises the possibility the opposition could try an assault on the capital. On the Internet, there were calls by protesters for all policemen, armed forces and youth to march to Tripoli on Friday.

In his speech Tuesday night, Gaddafi defiantly vowed to fight to his "last drop of blood" and roared at supporters to strike back against Libyan protesters to defend his embattled regime.

"You men and women who love Gaddafi... get out of your homes and fill the streets," Gaddafi said. "Leave your homes and attack them in their lairs."

Gaddafi appears to have lost the support of several tribes and his own diplomats, including Libya's ambassador in Washington, Ali Adjali, and deputy UN Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi.

International alarm has risen over the crisis, which sent oil prices soaring to the highest level in more than two years on Tuesday and sparked a scramble by European and other countries to get their citizens out of the North African nation. The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting that ended with a statement condemning the crackdown, expressing "grave concern" and calling for an "immediate end to the violence" and steps to address the legitimate demands of the Libyan people.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy also pressed Wednesday for European Union sanctions against Libya's regime because of its violent crackdown on protesters, and raised the possibility of cutting all economic and business ties between the EU and the North African nation.

"The continuing brutal and bloody repression against the Libyan civilian population is revolting," Sarkozy said in a statement. "The international community cannot remain a spectator to these massive violations of human rights."

Italian news reports have said witnesses and hospital sources in Libya are estimating there are 1,000 dead in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, alone.

"We have no complete information about the number of people who have died," Frattini said in a speech to a Catholic organization in Rome ahead of a briefing in Parliament on Libya. "We believe that the estimates of about 1,000 are credible."

Libya is the biggest supplier of oil to Italy, which has extensive energy, construction and other business interests in the north African country and decades of strong ties.

Frattini said the Italian government is asking that the "horrible bloodshed" cease immediately.

AJC Director David Harris' Gadhafi regime's widespread use of brutal force against protesters makes a mockery of the council.

The American Jewish Committee called Monday on the United Nations General Assembly to suspend Libya's membership from the UN Human Rights Council in light of the recent human rights violations in the country.

"The Gadhafi regime's widespread use of brutal force against protesters makes a mockery of the UN Human Rights Council," said AJC Executive Director David Harris.

"Libya's membership in the Human Rights Council is clearly incompatible with the noble aims of the world body, as enshrined in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and other relevant human rights instruments," said Harris. "We count on the U.S., EU and other like-minded democratic nations truly committed to the protection of human rights – and the good name of the UN – to take the lead at the General Assembly on this pressing issue."

Al-Jazeera reported Monday that the Libyan air force bombed protesters who were on their way to an army base, according to eyewitness testimony.

Clashes between protesters and security forces in Libya have escalated and spread after several days of violence threatening to topple Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi's 42-year rule. Muammar Gadhafi's son went on state television earlier to proclaim that his father remained in charge with the army's backing and would fight until "the last man, the last woman, the last bullet."

Libya was elected for a three-year term on the Council just under a year ago, with a majority of 155 of 192 members of the voting in favor of the African country's admission.

At the time of the election, AJC declared that "Libya should be the subject of a UN Human Rights Council investigation, not an active member. Libya's uncontested election demonstrates yet again the current Council's blithe disregard for consistently upholding the human rights clauses of the UN Charter."

"Our words just a few months ago ring all the more true today," Harris said. "The world must not stand by while hundreds of people are being systematically killed, and many more brutalized and threatened as Gadhafi seeks to hold to the power he seized nearly 42 years ago."

"Not calling a special session on Libya will inevitably raise profound questions about the Council's role in defending universal human rights and avoiding, in the UN resolution's own words, any semblance of 'double standards and politicization,'" Harris added.

Israeli F-16s! Jewish African mercenaries! Zionist riots! According to a bunch of tweeters, one or more callers to Al Jazeera claim to have seen Israeli F-16s land in Libya and/or bomb innocent civilians.

And the tweeters believe it.

Another rumor says that Israeli-trained African Jews are the mercenaries Gaddafi hired to shoot people:

But, of course, the Libyan regime has his own theories:

But no matter what, some tweeters understand that this is a great opportunity to engage in some old fashioned anti-semitism:

Avoiding euphoria over Obama

A strange euphoria seems to have blinded some Israelis and American Jews concerning the context of President Barack Obama's veto of a UN resolution.

In the past, blatantly one-sided anti- Israeli resolutions were vetoed as a matter of course. On this occasion, the issue was complicated because of the Obama administration's disastrous, long-standing obsession with the settlements, which paved the way for the unprecedented Palestinian demand for a settlement freeze as a precondition to negotiations.

Desperate to avoid employing the veto, Obama extended extraordinary concessions to the Palestinians if they agreed to modify the language of the resolution.

He offered a Security Council "presidential statement" expressing identical views to the resolution condemning the Jewish presence in the West Bank and Jerusalem. He was willing to endorse a Russian proposal for a Security Council fact-finding mission on settlements and a proposed expansion of the Quartet's involvement to cover areas ranging from the 1967 borders to the political status of Jerusalem.

According to The Wall Street Journal, at the last moment Obama phoned PA President Mahmoud Abbas offering to endorse or abstain on the resolution if the Palestinians agreed to replace the word "illegal" with "illegitimate" in relation to settlements.

Normal procedure after such a vote would have been a simple US statement that the resolution was one-sided and that the Security Council was not the venue to engage in this issue. It could also have noted that Israel had frozen settlements for 10 months while the Palestinians still refused to negotiate.

Instead, US Ambassador Susan Rice made a supplementary statement condemning settlements, employing some of the most vehement language against the Jewish state ever used by a senior US official.

THAT ABBAS refused to accept Obama's extraordinary offers reflects the fact that the Palestinians are now being hoisted by their own petard. Their incitement has been so effective that following the Al Jazeera disclosures of concessions discussed behind closed doors - which they had no intention of ever implementing or even revealing to their people - they cannot now contemplate the slightest compromise without being condemned as traitors.

With global anti-Israeli hostility combining with the seething cauldron of revolution in the Arab world, Abbas is confident that by avoiding negotiations, he will oblige the Obama administration to intensify pressure on Israel.

He also appreciates the effectiveness of engaging in "lawfare" rather than terrorism, with a massive program of demonization, boycott and delegitimization in the UN pipeline where the most outrageously anti-Israeli resolutions are guaranteed an automatic majority. We can anticipate a cascade of resolutions seeking to transform Israel into a pariah state, accusing it of breaching international law, branding its leaders as war criminals and seeking to drag it into the International Court of Justice.

The US relationship now assumes even greater importance to our security, both militarily and diplomatically. In this context, despite harsh criticism from the political Right, full credit should be accorded to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for his diplomatic tightrope walk with the Obama administration.

He made concessions, but succeeded in resisting the most outrageous demands, thus averting a catastrophic breakdown in relations.

It is likely that despite the disastrous consequences of Obama's failed efforts to engage with rogue states, were he not facing reelection, he would not allow Israel's security to stand in the way of his efforts to appease the Islamic world.

But despite his groveling to the Palestinians before and after the UN Security Council resolution, he was ultimately obliged to exercise the US veto for the first time since he gained office. He did so only out of a realization that he would have faced widespread condemnation from Congress and even his own party had he failed to do so.

But our problems will intensify in the months to come. It is chilling to contemplate how the administration may seek to "balance" its veto by imposing new pressures on Israel, which could soon be facing rejectionist states on most of its borders.

We must now invest all our resources into strengthening US-Israel ties. We are fortunate that the military support under the Obama administration has been strengthened. But in light of uncertainties with the new Egypt, and Iran's growing regional influence, that support assumes an even greater importance.

The Netanyahu government must now ensure that the Obama administration does not have a pretext for abandoning us in the diplomatic arena. It must urgently craft strategies to deal with the difficult days ahead.

We need to reiterate our willingness for a two-state regime. But that can only be implemented when the Palestinian leaders are ready for peace, are willing to tell their people the truth, and when it is clear that as the IDF departs, the West Bank will not be transformed into Hamastan.

UNFORTUNATELY, this is unlikely in the foreseeable future. For now, all we can do is continue enhancing the economic status of the Palestinians and seek interim solutions. This may give them the incentive to choose leaders willing to accept peace.

There are difficult decisions to be made on issues that impinge on our national security that can no longer be held in abeyance because of short-term political interests. If we fail to move in this direction, we will face determined efforts to impose a solution which could place our future in jeopardy. We should also identify those territories we would annex if the Palestinians unilaterally abrogate the Oslo Accords and declare an independent state.

Our government - preferably a unity government - can no longer prevaricate; it must now bite the bullet and make the tough decisions about borders, security and settlements that a majority of the nation will endorse.

We must have a comprehensive plan if we are to persuade the American public and Congress to remain steadfast.